Woke up-got outta bed, dragged a comb across my head (well not really-I don't own a comb). Made my way down...shit-I don't have any stairs either.
Anyway, grabbed a red bull and headed down to the RBC meeting in Woodley Park. I didn't have tickets so I planned on photographing the protest while staying out of the ruckus at the behest of the Obama campaign.
One of the great things about living in DC is the proximity to power. Not that I really care about weilding said power myself but it's really neat just to witness it in our day to day lives here sometimes.
Follow me if you have enough internet speed for several photos.....
So I arrived really early, about 7:30 I believe, expecting real mayhem since the Clinton campaign had been floating rumors of 10,000 protesters coming to town from parts near and far. There were 2 people with shoddy little "Count Our Votes" placards.
I hung out a while in the nice air conditioned luxury of the Wardman Hotel for a while, chatted up a few Hillary and Barack supporters and waited for the fun to begin. Pretty soon there were some busses full of supporters of Senator Clinton and I was immediately shocked at the nasty comments they were making pretty much into the thin air as they chatted over coffee.
Met a nice guy who works for Obama and chatted for a while. Howard Dean came out of a private room and said hello and shared a joke and a handshake with us. Geting kind of bored so I figure I'll go out to the protest down the street. There were maybe a couple hundred folks down there and let me tell you, Hunter S. would have loved this day in time. It was really surreal and marked by an intense amount of nastiness and just plain hate and billingsgate.
So-enough of my incredibly amateur prose and on to some pictures. This first one was of a nice lady screaming about how fucked the Democratic party is and that John McCain is clearly going to be our next president. It sounded rather lyrical in her west-African accent which I recognized from my time working in Nigeria. I love the bit of her sign alluding to "blue color" voters....
Next shot turned out to be a self-fullfilling prophecy...they did agree to seat all the delegates right?
And here we have a random swipe at Senator Obama's horrible affinity for saying nice things to people...
Funny thing...it seems about 10 to 15 percent of the crowd were Larouchebags. This lovely sign was brought to us from the ever effective "LarouchePAC"-Awesome!
Now this next picture is included because of the sticker on this nice young ladies chest. I was really upset because the great artist Shepard Fairey's infamous "Andre the Giant has a Posse" sticker was copied with a Hillary image. Any skate punks out there from the '80s will surely know of this sticker.(Shepard Fairey also designed the gorgeous Obama campaign posters that were for sale a while back on barackobama.com).....
This shot I just like because of the trees and the bridge over Connecticut Ave. Actually a pretty positive message in a day of really dark imagery and sounds....
And finally, I was stoked to score this fantastic campaign button off a nice old guy I met. Fucking Marion Barry (my hero) endorsing Jimmy Carter for the 1980 campaign. Unbeleivable score! The button is shown on top of a picture of my Dad and Jimmy.My father worked for the Carter Administration when I was a young child. I covered Pop to defend his anonymity.....
So-hope you enjoy and that my pathetic narration didn't dtract from the experience to much. I wish I could just communicate through my trusty Leica sometimes.
Cheers!